I’m not naming names, but I do want to tell you a story.
“Karo!” exclaimed one of my website and managed hosting clients — let’s call him Leo. “For [redacted]’s sake, I’ve had it with these SEO people. I’m going to kill them and bury them in a ditch!”
…And, truth be told, I could relate.
Leo was on his third SEO agency. This latest one had just advised him to re-add several pages the second agency told him to delete — pages the first agency had mishandled in the first place.
Each of these agencies was considered “best in class” — and priced accordingly. Understandably, Leo’s frustration mounted, along with the colour of his vocabulary.
Every time, the result was the same: Leo returned to me, and we had to adjust the website structure — again.
Could the agencies have made the changes themselves? Technically, yes. But:
a) Their developers kept tampering with the visual style of the site — something Leo was adamant about preserving, and
b) The turnaround times were glacial, leaving him with a steadily growing bill and very little to show for it.
He felt thoroughly let down — not just by one agency, but by the entire model. And unfortunately, Leo is not alone.
As someone who likes to understand systems, I began to look more closely.
Our Thesis
Founders don’t get burned because they’re naive. They get burned because the SEO industry often fails to meet them where they are.
1. Founders Are Sold the Wrong Thing
Most SEO agencies operate like machines. If the machine is calibrated for your business, that can work brilliantly. But in my experience, most are configured to serve established companies — not to embed themselves within the high-pressure, reactive world of early-stage growth.
Founders, by contrast, are often in triage mode: time-poor, overstretched, and under immense pressure to generate traction — preferably yesterday. Budgets are fluid. Priorities shift weekly, sometimes daily.
This doesn’t align well with the fixed-scope, packaged solutions agencies typically offer — and that, in my view, is where things begin to fall apart.
I’ve met many SEO professionals — often in joint client meetings. They’re usually lovely people and very competent. But what they deliver is a process, and processes don’t like deviation. The model is designed for volume, not flexibility.
2. No Holistic Strategy — Just Deliverables
Here lies my core frustration: Leo’s second agency took three months to onboard him. Three months — and still no meaningful positioning work. Just research.
Now, I value research. Deeply. But a thorough keyword and backlink audit should take days, not quarters. I can run a full technical audit in under an hour.
What most clients receive in the end is a tidy package:
- X blog posts,
- Y backlinks,
- Z monthly reports.
But rarely is any of it aligned with the customer journey or conversion strategy. It’s simply SEO-flavoured content — often AI-generated.
(And yes — I use AI. It helped me shape this very piece. But let’s be honest: what it produces is for crawlers, not humans.)
3. Where Is the Urgency?
Perhaps it’s the ADHD in me, but I favour environments that move fast. I value responsiveness. Urgency.
And this is precisely where agencies lose me. When a monthly retainer is guaranteed, and the default explanation is “SEO takes time,” there’s little incentive to act quickly.
Let’s be clear: SEO does take time. But not every business can afford to wait, and not all require a full-stack, long-term engagement.
Very few agencies will tell you that.
If you’re a founder and your SEO journey feels like death by a thousand invoices — you’re not alone. The system wasn’t built for your stage.
But there are better ways forward. Start by asking: Is this model built for where I am right now?
If the answer is no, it’s not you — it’s the system.
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